Changing Universities

Monday, May 22, 2017

The UC Regents revealed their
utter failure of integrity and effectiveness at their last meeting when they
were discussing the state audit of the Office of the President. Instead of simply trying to get to the truth of the way UCOP has been acting,
most of the regents spent a great deal of time praising President Napolitano
and each other. What they failed to examine was why and how UCOP interfered
with the audit, and if UCOP was hiding money and actions from the regents
themselves.Moreover, no one asked why
the campuses changed their reviews of UCOP: were the campus leaders afraid or
were they coerced?We still do not know
the direct role of Napolitano in any of this, and it is likely that the state
will continue to investigate the situation, and the truth will eventually
emerge.As I have been arguing for
years, the main problem with the leaders of the university system is that they
are not focused on the central mission of discovering and communicating
truth through modern methods of education and science. Their main concern
is to keep the system running and to maintain its reputational excellence. Instead
of trying to discover the truth of its own operations, the regents and UCOP
decided to blame the media for focusing on salacious details of the auditor’s
report. Some regents also tried attacking the state auditor and the
legislature, and this strategy should remind us of another president – the one
who is currently running the country.

Like Trump, the regents
played the victim card by attacking the media. Since they did
not want to really ask tough questions, they turned their ire towards the ones
who were trying to find the truth.This
insular arrogance and defensiveness is precisely what the governor and the
legislature dislike about the university leaders.As the regents rallied around the president
to proclaim that nothing criminal was found, they failed to perform their own
role as the overseers of the university.Meanwhile, Regent Blum defended the system by saying that he once tried
to figure out what was going on, and he soon realized that it is too
complicated for any of the regents to really understand the details, so it is
best to take the word of the people in the know.

The Regents and UCOP thus represent the opposite
of what a public university should be about. Instead of pursuing the necessary,
but impossible, ideals of neutrality, objectivity, and truth, the leaders of
the system see their only role as self-promotion. Like Trump, the leaders are wealthy,
non-experts who do not even know what they do not know and feel they are above
the law. Their only tactic is to attack
the messenger and celebrate their own self-proclaimed greatness. However, the
truth usually finds a way of showing its ugly head, and at that moment, the
university will have its reputation damaged once again by the people who think
they are protecting it.

Monday, May 8, 2017

On the same day that the
state auditor released her scathing report on the UC Office of the President, I
was complying with my duty to complete the required online ethics
training.How ironic.As I was being told about my ethical
obligation to report anything and everything to staff and upper management, the
world was learning that the UCOP office tampered with the official audit.Although it is still unclear if the unethical
actions of the administration will result in criminal charges, what is clear is
that the administration has once again failed to live up to its own ethical
standards.

Not only did UCOP change
answers on the campus surveys to make them look better and hide any real
criticism, but it is clear that President Napolitano clearly misrepresented the
truth during the state legislative hearing.Not only was she wrong when she said that her office did not interfere
to make UCOP look better, but the recent discovery of new emails shows that she
was directly involved in the process of undermining an official state
investigation.

Of course, one of the other
main findings of the audit was the continued increase in the number of high-paid
administrators at UCOP and the use of non-transparent accounting
mechanisms.What this audit revealed is
what many faculty and critics of the university have always argued, which is
that administrative bloat not only takes money away from the core mission, but
it also creates a super-class of unethical actors.Virtually no one at UCOP has a background in
education or can be said to be committed to scholarly values.In short, transplants from politics and
business have taken over the system, and they do not share our fundamental
values or concerns.

Making matters worse is that
almost none of the UC Regents have an academic background or deep understanding
of what it means to teach a course or perform a research study or produce a
departmental budget.Like their UCOP
counter-parts, the Regents combine their lack of knowledge with an imposition
of a business-oriented mentality that threatens the public mission of the
university.

UCOP’s main problem is its
sustained arrogance and insularity, and while many of the president’s pet
projects may have been well intentioned, they appear to have been void of any
oversight or accountability. Moreover, the fact that the campuses changed their
own responses on the surveys show that they are either afraid of UCOP or
believe their main mission is to conform to the chain of command.

We have clearly not heard the
end of this investigation, and what would be a horrible outcome is if the legislature
or the governor used this scandal as a reason to not fully fund the university.

Monday, January 23, 2017

The election of Donald Trump has pushed many people to ask
how progressives should respond to his presidency.Should we critique and mock all of his
actions and statements or should we try to give him the benefit of the doubt
and work with him on common interests?I
believe the proper response is to not only hold him accountable for his words
and actions, but more importantly, we need to equate him with the Republic
party.In other words, instead of seeing
him as some oddity or anomaly in the political system, we have to show how he
embodies the truth of the conservative counter-revolution.

One of the biggest mistakes the Clinton Campaign made and
others continue to repeat is to separate Trump from the traditional Republican
politicians.What we need to do is show
how Trump exemplifies amoral capitalism, and this combination of selfish greed
and a lack of morality has been driving the Republicans since the time of
Reagan.What Trump helps to clarify is
that behind all of the talk of religious values and fiscal responsibility, we
find a small class of people trying to enhance their power and money at any
costs.The fact that many Christian
fundamentalists supported the blatantly amoral Trump shows that the Republicans
don’t really care about religion or morality.

One problem is that even though Trump does not believe in
most of the core conservative moral issues, he is still appointing people and
supporting policies that will result in destructive restrictions of human
rights and government support for those most in need.The problem is that he controls all of the
branches of government, and he believes that his power resides in giving what
he thinks his base is demanding. What progressives then have to do is try to
convince Republican voters that Trump and his supporters in Congress really do
not care about their values and issues.Progressives also have to make the case that not only their policies will
help disgruntled Trump voters, but their values are more in line with the
values of these voters.

As George Lakoff insists, Democrats have to focus on values
over policies because this is what affects voters in a more direct manner.For instance, by always using the term “the
Affordable Care Act” instead of “Obamacare,” the value of affordability is
highlighted over the notion that a liberal president is forcing people to do
things they do not want to do.Likewise,
Lakoff insists that we should use the term “protections” instead of “regulations,”
when we are discussing rules and laws that serve to fight against bad behavior
by corporations and individuals.

Although we most continue to fight against racism, sexism,
and homophobia, it is important to show how these modes of prejudice are related
to economic issues concerning poverty and inequality.In terms of values, the stress should be on
making things more fair and equal at the same time that individual rights are
protected. Moreover, the problem with some versions of identity politics is not
that they focus on discrimination and prejudice, but they can make it hard to
build coalitions among different identity groups.What we need to do then is to always keep our
eyes on the prize and seek to organize diverse groups to develop sustainable
political power.

One problem that tis progressive agenda faces is that it may
not be supported by many of the liberal institutions who are often focused on
maintaining power and wealth and not creating a more just and equal
society.This is why we have to fight
to transform our own political parties, universities, unions, and media to make
them more democratic and progressive.

Tuesday, December 13, 2016

Now that most of the faculty
teaching in the U.S. do not have tenure, it is important to think about how the
current political climate might affect these vulnerable teachers.One important thing to keep in mind is that
many of these faculty members rely on getting high student evaluations in order
to keep their jobs or earn a pay increase.This emphasis on pleasing students not only can result in grade
inflation and defensive teaching, but it also places the teacher in an
impossible situation when dealing with political issues in a polarized
environment.In fact, during the
election, I was teaching a course on Writing and Public Discourse, and by
chance, I had student leaders from both political parties in my class. Although
I tried to not reveal any of my political views in class, students could go
online and research my outside activities.

In talking to some of my
conservative students, they told me that they feel like they are the real
minorities on campus, and even though Trump won, they still think that they
cannot express their true opinions. On the other side, some of my
self-identified progressive student activists believe that political
correctness makes it hard to have an open discussion: from their perspective,
since anything can be perceived as a micro-aggression, people tend to silence
themselves.

What I am describing is an
educational environment where almost everyone is afraid to speak.The non-tenure-track faculty are fearful of
losing their jobs, the conservative students see themselves as a censored
minority, and the progressive students are afraid of being called out for their
privilege or lack of political correctness.Making matters worse is that students are often socialized by their
large lecture classes to simply remain passive and silent.

It appears that we are facing
a perfect storm where free speech and real debate is no longer possible. One
way of countering this culture is to stop relying on student evaluations to
assess contingent faculty.If we want
teachers to promote open dialogue in their classes, they should not have to be
afraid that they will lose their jobs for promoting the free exchange of
ideas.We need to rely more on the peer
review of instruction, and we have to stop using the easy way out. In short, we
have to change how non-tenure-track are evaluated as we push to include all faculty
in departmental and institutional governance.If we do not work together to fight back against the current climate, we
will all suffer together.